JP Nunez
I haven’t known about The Institute for very long, but I was dying to see this movie from the moment I first saw the trailer. It promised a super creepy mystery that intrigued the hell out of me so I requested a screener right away. I needed to know what was going on in this film, and now that I’ve finally seen it, I’m happy to report that it does not disappoint.
The Institute was directed by Hamza Zaman, and it stars Ignacyo Matynia, Victorya Brandart, Mark Lobene, Joy Donze, Claire McClain, Louisa Bradshaw, and Jarred Harper. It’s about a young couple named Daniel and Marie who are struggling to have a baby, and they’ve become pretty desperate. They’ve gone to all sorts of doctors to find a solution, but so far they’ve had no luck. As a last-ditch effort, they go to the Lands Institute, a secluded fertility institute run by a renowned doctor, but they soon come to realize that something isn’t quite right with their treatment.
For the first 15 or 20 minutes, The Institute is all about Daniel and Marie’s life and their struggle with infertility, and for my money, that was the exact right way to go. Horror is always more effective when you care about the characters, and that’s doubly true for a small, contained film like this one. It stands or falls almost entirely on how much you care about its main couple, and happily, Daniel and Marie are winners right from the start.
They’re played really well by Ignacyo Matynia and Victorya Brandart, and the two actors have very good chemistry together. I genuinely believed that they were a married couple going through this struggle, so I had no trouble at all sympathizing with them. I felt their pain at not being able to have a baby and I wanted them to finally see their dream come true. This made me really like these characters pretty much from the moment I saw them and my positive feelings for them continued throughout the rest of the film.
When Daniel and Marie finally arrive at the Lands Institute, the movie changes gears, and things immediately become weird. In a lot of ways, the place seems more like a hippie cult commune than a legitimate medical facility, and when we meet Dr. Lands himself, he just reinforces that impression. He’s played wonderfully by Mark Lobene, and he might even be my favorite character in The Institute. He has the calm, soothing, cult-leader demeanor down perfectly, so any time he’s on-screen, he just ups the intrigue in an awesome way.
Then, as the film goes on, the Lands Institute gets stranger and stranger. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’ll just say that the doctor has some very questionable and very creepy methods. You can definitely tell that he has an ulterior motive but the story doesn’t let you in on what it could be (at least not yet!). It’s exactly the kind of captivating mystery the trailer promised and I couldn’t get enough of it.
That being said, this part of The Institute does have a few noticeable flaws as well. For starters, while the three main characters were all great, the doctor’s other patients weren’t quite up to par. In particular, the acting was a bit hit or miss and their interactions with one another weren’t always super believable. They sometimes felt more like fictional characters than real people, and that took me out of the story a little bit.
On top of that, as much as I loved Dr. Lands and the mystery behind his institute, it sometimes felt like Marie should’ve realized that something wasn’t quite right. For the most part, Daniel is the one who questions the place, but Marie just goes along with everything the doctor says, no matter how weird it is. It’s just a little too much at times, so like the poor supporting characters, this also took me out of the film a bit.
But in the grand scheme of things, those are pretty minor complaints, so when the third act hit, I was still completely hooked. I was dying to know what was really going on, and when The Institute pulled back the curtain, it did not disappoint. I’m obviously not going to spoil what happens, so I’m going to be vague here.
I’ll simply say that I enjoyed the payoff just as much as the buildup, and that’s pretty rare. A lot of movies set up great mysteries and then struggle to make their big reveals live up to our expectations, but not this one. My enjoyment of the film stayed fairly steady even after I found out what was really going on, so the wait to get there was totally worth it.
What’s more, the third act also goes all-in on the horror, and the final few scenes are especially horrific. In fact, there was even one part that genuinely shocked me, so when the credits began to roll, I was a very happy camper.
So if you’re looking for some good new horror to watch this month, I’d definitely recommend checking out The Institute. It has excellent main characters, a super intriguing mystery, and a satisfying third act. So, while it’s by no means a perfect film, the good in it outweighs the bad by a very wide margin.
The Institute comes out on VOD, DVD, and Blu-ray on March 22.
